“It’s hotter than the devil’s asshole after eating a ghost pepper. Stay hydrated, boys.” I glanced up at the Syrian sun as I drank from my camelback.

The heat had never bothered me much, but heat stroke was a major threat in a place like this, and I didn’t need any of my soldiers taking a dirt nap. It was hard enough carrying a full molle pack and our battle rattle, without it being a hundred degrees outside… but it wasn’t even noon yet. We were going to be in for a crazy hot day in the next few hours.

I squeezed some water from my pack on my face to clean off the dirt. The wind blew across the ancient site steadily, but it offered no relief from the stifling heat. It felt like I was in a sauna with a blowdryer on my face, one that spewed forth not only hot air, but sand and dust as well. Even after rinsing out my mouth, I could still feel the sand in my teeth, and a thin film of dust coated my tongue.

Right about then I would have given my left nut for a cold beer.

We’d arrived a few hours before midday to secure the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria, after reports came in that the site was once again being targeted by ISIS. They had attacked the Temple of Baal Shamin a few years back and left only a pair of pillars standing where the ancient temple had once been. It was a shame really. The temple had stood for nearly two-thousand years, but it had been reduced to nothing but rubble in mere seconds.

My squad’s job was to sweep the city for landmines, repair the roads leading in, and secure the site for the archaeologists. The place was over two-hundred acres of dirt, broken columns, half-crumbled arches, temples, and even an ancient Roman-looking amphitheater. It was far too large for my squad of nine men to patrol properly, but backup was set to arrive shortly after noon. Until then, I ordered my men to focus on the roads. We hadn’t found any landmines or IED’s, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. Most likely the threat from ISIS was a bluff, but it was up to grunts like me to ensure historical sites like this remained intact through the conflict.

Aside from securing the roads, we had been instructed to focus on the Temple of Nebu. I had no idea what made the temple so important, since all that was left of it was a square sandstone slab with some markings on it and three pillars, but I didn’t need to know. I just did what I was told.

That’s what you did in the army, especially when you were a sapper. Do as you’re told. Do your job. Shut up, and color. Don’t stand out or showboat. Just perform.

My plan after returning to the states was to join my father in the family business. He was an engineer like me, and I guess his passion for creation rubbed off on me. For as long as I could remember I’d loved to build things. And it wasn’t the final product that I was most in love with, but the process, the math, the calculations, the precision. The idea of imagining something and then making it a reality had always appealed to me. In my mind, creation had always been the thing that put us apart from other animals. Sure, spiders could spin webs and beavers could build dams, but it was all they did. Humans, on the other hand, could imagine almost anything and make it a reality.

It was a scary thought sometimes, but at other times, it was uplifting.

I was well aware of the power of the mind, the power of focus and positive thinking, but that wasn’t all a person needed. Plans were vital, and the ability to make and stick to plans was what separated the doers from the dreamers

“Hey Sar'nt,” said Johnson, a young cocky kid from Texas who was always grinning. “You know why they really want us to secure this place?”

I said nothing as I scoured the distant pillars and half crumbled walls.

“I got a feeling you’re going to tell us,” McAllister said as he patted down the last shovel full of dirt onto the road. He was a freckle-faced farm boy from Indiana with broad shoulders and big arms. He stood six-foot two and was almost as tall as me. He was a hell of a worker, unlike Johnson, who always seemed to be screwing around.

Johnson let the tension build up and spat in the dirt. When he was sure he had our unbridled attention, he finally divulged his secret. “The temple is a fucking stargate.”

“Awe man, this shit again?” McAllister groaned.

But Johnson relished in his own bullshit and smiled wider. “Yep. I read about it in a book by that crazy-looking dude from Ancient Aliens.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The dude with the wild hair in all the internet memes,” Johnson replied as he narrowed his eyes and held out his hands.

“You read his book but you don’t remember his name?” I asked, and Johnson shrugged.

“Can’t remember them all, Sar'nt. Shit, 99% of my brain’s hard drive is reserved for the spank bank.” As if we didn’t know what the spank bank was, Johnson stuck out his tongue and pretended to pound his groin.

“You know what, Johnson? It helps to clear your spank bank if you only keep one woman in mind,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Who do you think about?”

I ignored him, but McAllister took the bait. “Your mom.”

Johnson’s face blanched.

“You see,” McAllister continued, “every time you say something stupid, I allot myself one more fantasy about your mother. And I’ll tell you, Johnson, I’ve got a fucking double feature going on down there.”

“Man, that’s fucked up,” said Johnson.

“Alright.” I had to put an end to the lax attitude. “Let’s keep the chatter down. We’ve got to sweep the remainder of the road for landmines, and there are still three more holes to fill before the trucks can get through, so get to it.”

I climbed up onto one of the hundreds of stone slabs strewn throughout the site and surveyed the north through my binoculars. There hadn’t been any other reports of ISIS activity in the region, and I didn’t really expect trouble, but I liked to treat every mission the same. I’d seen too many men pay the ultimate price for letting their guard down, and I wasn’t going to add my name to that long list of casualties.

The big round orange guy in the sky turned up the temperature a few more agonizing notches as late morning turned into early afternoon. I was beginning to get a little soggy at that point, and the molle pack on my back continued to get heavier. My men were holding up alright, considering there was no shade to be found, and the temperature was inching over into triple digits. The trick to beating the heat was to remain well hydrated and to know your limits. A big ego was a soldier’s worst enemy in a place like this.

Johnson had a large head on his shoulders, but that was to be expected with a kid from Texas. I liked the guy, but since I was a few years his senior, I had the experience and rank to make sure he didn’t mess up and get himself killed.

As though he sensed me thinking about him, Johnson sauntered over the fresh dirt we had just packed into a huge hole in the road. “How you feel about shipping home in a week, Sar'nt?” he said. He looked to have recovered from the insult and wiggled his eyebrows at me as he spoke.

“I’m not thinking about that right now.” I accentuated the point with a heavy sigh.

“Shit,” he said and spit on the dirt. “I bet you can’t wait to get your hands on some one-hundred-perrr-centtt USDA approved good old fashioned homegrown titties!”

I almost laughed, but I didn’t want to give him any encouragement. “We aren’t going to be getting any women if we don't get back from this mission alive, so stay frosty.”

“Shit,” Johnson said, spitting on the ground again. “This mission is a piece of cake, I doubt that--”

“Sergeant Jewell. We’ve got company!” Gibson called over the radio.

Gibson was fireteam two’s leader, and he and his men had been searching for IEDs north of my location.

“What do you see?” I hissed into the radio.

“Two trucks flying the black flag.”

“Fuck!” I said under my breath. “ETA?”

“Two, three minutes. Looks like they’ve got a couple of rocket launchers.”

“Get off the road and get ready to say hello,” I said into the radio as I turned to McAllister. “Get a hold of command and let them know we’re going to need a Reaper drone out here, fucking pronto!”

“On it, Sar’nt.”

“And find out where the hell our backup unit is.” I used my binoculars to search the dusty terrain to the north, but the enemy was still hidden behind the raised land. There was little chance that the Air Force would be able to get the Reaper drone to us in time, so we had to hold them off until it arrived.

“They’re splitting up, east and west,” Gibson said over the radio.

“Fireteam two, stay with the truck heading east. Fireteam one, take cover to the west,” I ordered, and the two men with me grabbed their gear and scrambled off the road toward a group of pillars that would give them an open view of the western side of the site. The rest of my team met up with us a few moments later, and we all hunkered down.

With any luck, the ISIS fighters would take their time to secure the site before moving in, and the Reaper would have time to get to us.

Two minutes later, one of their trucks appeared in the distance, and I confirmed what Gibson had reported. There were at least two adult aged males in the back of the dark brown truck carrying rocket launchers. If the intelligence the Army had received was correct, they were also hell bent on destroying the temple right behind me.

“The drone will be here in ten minutes,” McAllister reported.

“That’s ten minutes we don’t have,” Johnson said as he white-knuckled his machine gun.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“We’ll make it work, Johnson,” I said. Then I radioed Lucas, fireteam one’s sniper. “You keep a bead on those rocket launchers. Any indication that they’re preparing to fire, I want you to introduce them to Allah.”

“Affirmative,” he called back.

I looked to where I knew he had taken up his perch on a crumbling pillar that was still twelve feet tall, but I didn’t see him there. That was a good thing. If I couldn’t see him, then neither could our enemies.

I was a little more than pissed that my guys had spotted the enemy first. The United States spent a bazillion dollars on satellite imaging and could reportedly zoom in on a naked starlet’s nipples sunbathing in the Hollywood Hills, but they couldn’t see two big ass trucks driving through the desert.

So much for our tax dollars at work.

We all waited on our bellies behind the crumbled sandstone pillars. The other team hadn’t reported anything, and I took that as a good sign, so I checked my watch. It had been two minutes since McAllister reported the Reaper’s ETA, so we only had to sweat for eight more minutes. But a lot could happen in eight minutes.

I’d seen some action in Afghanistan during my two tours, and I’d been in worse situations before. However, now I was on the last leg of my third tour, and I was feeling a bit paranoid. There were plenty of stories about men eating a bullet a few days before they shipped home, and I didn’t want my boys to be added to that number. My soldiers had family waiting for them. I didn’t have a wife or kids to come back to, but both of my parents were still alive, and I was close to my siblings.

I spied the enemy through my binoculars as I hugged the ground. When the truck stopped about one-hundred and fifty yards away, the men poured out of it like it was a clown car. There were eight ISIS fighters in all, six with machine guns, and two carrying green tipped rocket launchers. They took their time like I had hoped and surveyed the surroundings while they spoke in hushed tones. Their voices came to me as incoherent murmurs, but it sounded like two of them were arguing. I saw one man point to the temple right behind my team and say something to the other man that sounded final.

I glanced at my watch. Two minutes had passed, and six remained.

I mentally urged the other man to argue against blowing up the temple, but he gave up. If they came too close or raised those rockets, we would be forced to engage, but if they took just a few more minutes, the Reaper would put them down before we had to.

I was hoping for the latter.

One minute passed while the men argued, and now only five remained. Waiting for that Reaper was like wading through deep mud. The seconds ticked by with an agonizing crawl and sweat dripped down my forehead slower than molasses, rode the bridge of my nose, and quivered there for an eon before it dripped into the dirt.

Then suddenly someone hit fast forward, and one of the men carrying a rocket launcher moved a few dozen feet to the south to get a better angle. He flipped up the crosshairs, raised the weapon onto his shoulder, closed his left eye, and touched his finger gently to the firing mechanism.

And that was the last thing he did.

Our sniper put a bullet between the man’s eyes, and the back of his head blew out in a spray of crimson and gray colored gore. His body crumpled to the ground, and a heartbeat later, all hell broke loose.

The enemy soldiers opened fire. It was more of a spray and pray than anything since none of the bullets came close to my men or me; I knew that they hadn’t seen us yet. They were just giving themselves some cover as they ran back to their truck.

Lucas put another one of the enemies down with a well-placed shot to the middle of the back. A puff of red mist exploded out the front of the man’s dusty jacket, and he did a faceplant on the grill of the truck.

To the east, I heard more gunfire.

“Fireteam two, report,” I said into my mic.

The team leader’s frantic voice came through my earpiece, “They got a fucking jump on us.” Gunfire ensued and barked loudly in my earpiece. “They’ve got us pinned in a shallow grave-- fuck!”

An explosion rocked the ancient site, and for a moment there was only silence. I looked east and saw a plume of dust rising into the air. My heart skipped a beat, and shit got real.

“Gibson, report!” I hissed into my mic.

Nothing.

“Take those fuckers out!” I ordered my men, and they all rose from their cover and began riddling the truck with bullets. We had our targets pinned down and had the higher ground, but the other team was in a bad spot.

I had to help.

“Keep the pressure on and don’t let those fucks fire the rockets!” I yelled at my team. “I’m going to back-up team two.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Johnson with a look of determination.

“Negative, soldier! Do what I fucking told you to do. McAllister, you’re in charge.”

I hunched low and raced through the broken pillars and piles of crumbled sandstone blocks toward the sounds of gunfire. The truck that had gone east was more than three hundred yards away and below my line of sight, but that was a good thing. It meant that I would have the higher ground. I didn’t have a sniper rifle, but my M4 had an effective range of about five-hundred and fifty yards, and I was a damn good shot.

I was even better under pressure.

One minute after I left team one, I spotted the enemy and dove behind a weathered half wall. There were six ISIS fighters holding down fireteam two with bursts of rifle fire, and smoke rose from a spot thirty yards to my right, along the same wall I was hiding behind. I could see team two down there huddled in a trench that surrounded the temple grounds. It didn’t look like any of them were injured, but they wouldn’t last long pinned down like that. One grenade could have ended all their lives at once. To their credit, they were staying relatively calm from what I could see, and they kept the pressure on with steady defensive fire.

I glanced at my watch and saw that the Reaper was due in two minutes.

I popped up from my cover and lit into one of the men hiding behind the truck. He was crouched behind the right corner of the tailgate, and my bullets destroyed the brake light and painted war graffiti all over the man’s chest. The other fighters saw me and opened fire in my direction, but I ducked down a split second after my last round exploded from the barrel. Then I low crawled ten yards to my right along the wall as bullets slammed into it.

My heart hammered in my chest. It thumped in my ears. The adrenaline was making me shaky, and I white knuckled my weapon. We just had to hold out for a few more minutes, and the ISIS fighters would be turned into Jihad kabobs by the drone.

Another glance at my watch told me that we had only one more minute to wait.

Gunfire continued to erupt from the west, and I glanced in that direction, hoping that team one could hold off the other fighters for a little while longer. A cry of pain whipped my head back around, and I dared a peak over the low wall. One of my men had been hit in the shoulder, but he was still alive and cursing, so I guessed that he still had some fight left in him. I popped up again and dumped my mag into the truck, hoping to get the fighters’ attention off my men.

It worked a little too well.

One of the men with a rocket launcher popped up from behind the truck and fired at my position, so I sprang up from my spot, sprinted toward the thickest part of the wall, kissed my ass goodbye, and dove for my life.

The explosion rocked me like the stacked speakers at a metal concert, and I landed hard on a pile of rubble. Dirt and debris rained down on me as I scrambled to keep moving, but my ears were ringing, and my head was spinning. I was almost deaf to the sounds of battle around me and half blinded by the dust and smoke. My mouth and eyes were full of sand, and the acrid stench of gunpowder seemed stuck in my nose. Confusion began to set in as my ears adjusted, and I became aware of distant gunfire.

Then I remembered my men trapped in the trench, and my instincts took over. I picked myself up from the debris and brought my carbine to bear as I glanced around the side of the pillar

I instantly wished I hadn’t looked, since bullets immediately ripped into the ancient landmark and speckled my face with tiny chunks of stone.

As my vision cleared, I saw that three men had broken off from the main group and were heading around the back of the truck so that they could come at me from the south. The angle put their vehicle between them and my men's line of fire, so I knew I was about to have an even more serious problem on my hands.

If I turned the corner again, it would likely be the last thing I did, so I used the cover of the pillar and the short wall to run back toward the temple. I didn’t bother looking at my watch. I knew that the Reaper was well past due, but even if it reached us now, the Air Force wouldn’t risk destroying the temple.

I was on my own.

There wasn’t much left of the temple aside from a chunk of square sandstone with three pillars still standing on one side, but it was enough to hide behind, so I dove to the safety offered by that bit of cover as bullets riddled the ground behind me like kamikaze metal wasps. I landed on my side, rolled, and popped up to my feet. Then I pressed my back against the sandstone and listened.

The gunfire stopped, but I didn’t take it as a good sign.

Then I saw it. The Reaper had finally arrived. I heard the warning cries of the men who had pursued me to the temple, and I smiled to myself.

“You boys are really fucked now!” I yelled over my shoulder.

“Sar'nt, get out of there!”

Lucas’s words in my earpiece came to me about the same time as the sound of a rocket launcher firing. There wasn’t much time for thinking, so I took three bounding steps and leaped for a depression behind the temple as the rocket exploded.

The world beneath me seemed to spin as I fell.

My ears rang so bad, I figured that they must’ve been bleeding, and for a millisecond, some part of my brain wondered if I would ever hear again. My vision turned black, and I guessed I had just taken a point-blank blast. My body went numb, and I realized that I was probably going to die.

But I didn’t die.

Instead, I hit the ground hard, and the air exploded from my dusty lungs.

I was happy to be alive, but when my vision cleared I saw that the roof of the temple was beginning to crumble. I covered my head to protect it from the falling stone and other debris, but the danger did not come from above. Instead, the ground began to vibrate, and the sand beneath my boots and knees began to disappear. I glanced back and saw that it was falling into a wide hole which had been created when the temple was hit. More sand and earth gave way, and I clawed at the nearby rocks as I tried to escape the sinkhole.

The ground beneath me suddenly disappeared, and I was sliding down like a boogie boarder riding a wave.

I fell a good ten feet before I slammed into a ledge, missed a hand hold, and slid off another edge. The next fall brought me another ten feet, but I managed to get my boots under me as I fell and landed on a small ledge that jutted out from the wall without breaking my neck. The shock of what had happened and the fact that I was still alive left me feeling almost giddy, but my celebration was short lived when I looked up.

Two ISIS fighters were staring down at me from the lip of the crater and were screaming something about Allah.

If they opened fire, I would be a dead man.

I looked down and expected to see what was left of the temple and other debris still falling into the abyss. But to my surprise, they did not fall into darkness, but into a bright blue light. I blinked, unable to believe my eyes. About a hundred feet below me, down at the bottom of the ten-foot-wide circular pit, was turquoise blue water. It even looked like the sun shone through it, but of course, that was impossible.

A bullet hit the wall beside me, and I realized then that the sling ripped off, and I dropped my rifle. I let out a string of curses, pulled my sidearm, and squeezed off three rounds. The men ducked back from the opening, and I was safe for the time being. But if I remained on the ledge, I would be a sitting duck. My only salvation lay at the bottom of the pit, in the pristine, sunlit waters that had no right being at the bottom of a sunbaked desert.

I couldn’t rely on my men to get me out of this one, and the Reaper wasn’t going to fire on the site of the ancient temple. All I had to do was drop into the waters below and wait out the battle on the surface, and eventually my people would drop down a rope.

At least, that was the plan.

The enemies above me pointed their AK’s into the pit blindly and fired, and I did the only thing I could do.

I quickly peeled off my pack, removed my Kevlar, put the pack back on, and jumped feet first into the hole.

Bullets ricocheted through the pit, and I screamed in defiance as I fell with my middle finger held high. It wasn’t the most graceful of leaps, and I bounced off the walls like a pinball. My molle pack protected my back from the rough stone of the natural well, but I hit my shoulder pretty hard as I ping-ponged my way down, down, down.

The drop was much farther than I had estimated. At least another hundred feet more, and I fell for so long that I had time to let out my earlier breath and take another. When I finally hit the water, the impact was jarring. One of my legs twisted to the side, and I dipped backward as I sank. I had trained for shit like this, and I remembered to remain calm and steadily swim for the surface. I could see a shimmering light above me, and for a moment I thought it must be the sun, but I was below the surface of the earth, likely in a natural underground lake, and the sun hadn’t been high enough for me to see through the natural well above.

Whatever it was, it meant air, it meant safety, and I pumped my arms and legs. It felt like I would never break through to the surface, and when I finally did I let the carbon dioxide explode from my lungs before I took in greedy gulps of fresh air.

I opened my eyes, thankful to still be breathing, and that’s when I saw two suns sitting high in the sky. Salt water stung my eyes, and I rubbed at them, sure that I had mistaken the two suns for something else. When I opened my eyes, the suns were still there. I forced myself upright and treaded water. To my right was a sandy beach and forest beyond. To my left was a tall, rocky cliff.

I didn’t know where I was, but I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t Earth.